


J is for Jellyfish

by notmyyacht



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-01 23:08:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6540340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notmyyacht/pseuds/notmyyacht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If you were any type of animal, which animal would you be?" Well, Frederick always did identify with those squishy creatures from the ocean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	J is for Jellyfish

**Author's Note:**

> For the ABCs of Chilton tumblr challenge. I got "J"! So OF COURSE I went with "jellyfish" lol

It is at age seven when Frederick Chilton is asked "If you were a type of animal, what animal would you be and why?" It is a prompt to get the class to write a full paragraph. The other children immediately set to work, writing about how they would be a kitten or a dog or even a kangaroo. Seven-year-old Freddy stares down at his lined paper completely drawing a blank.

What type of animal would he be? What kind of joke is this?

When something finally does come to mind, Freddy grins. Of course, he'd be a mushroom! He sets his pencil down at the top of his paper, then pauses. Wait a minute, a mushroom isn't an animal. What did his mother call it? A fun guy? Fungi? Whatever it was, it wasn't an animal. Freddy immediately jumps back into panic mode.

His mind races with various animals. A deer? No. Perhaps a flamingo? No, that certainly wouldn't do. Jake, the class bully called him a bird-beaked squirt just yesterday. Assigning himself a bird wouldn't help his situation.

Poor Freddy scans the room, hoping for inspiration to hit. More than once he glances at the clock above the teacher's desk and every time he grows more nervous that he won't even have something started by the time the hour is up.

Ready to burst into tears or considering trying to fake being sick to avoid the assignment, Freddy sits back in his seat and glances over at the science posters in the corner. Just last week they had to name as many fish in the sea that they could and guess where they lived and draw them. Freddy looked at his own drawing of a jellyfish. He had been wrong about where it lived, but his teacher had given him points for thinking outside of salmon and sharks, unlike most of his classmates. Plus, he was very proud of his pink crayon drawing of a half-moon with squiggles underneath it.

That's when it clicks. A grin spreads across Freddy's face and he immediately gets to work.

At age forty-five, Frederick Chilton has long forgotten the assignment his second-grade teacher had assigned all those years ago. At age forty-five, Frederick stands in front of a tank filled with round, beautiful jellyfish - _aurelia aurita_ , the moon jellyfish, to be precise.

Frederick isn't sure why he had come to the aquarium. Just an excuse to get out of the house. He rarely went out anymore; not to a bar, not to a concert, not even to the grocery store. No, now he had his groceries delivered. The local aquarium had a new jellyfish exhibit and the ad for it was enough to drag himself there. He likes jellyfish, he had told himself, maybe it'll be good for him. Maybe he deserved to have something good, no matter how common.

The exhibit is perfect, he finds. The room where they keep the jellies is darkened so as to enhance the natural glow of the jellyfish. No one stares at Frederick there, at the unnatural patches on his face.

He had been surprised how much he still looked like himself when the grafts were complete, but with one look one could tell something was... _off_. Most people politely smiled and kept their gaze averted, while others would just stare. Frederick didn't blame them. Every morning he, too, would stare at the man in the mirror, wondering how the hell he got here. It was as if someone had stolen his face and replaced it with a cheap knockoff. He would have to stare into his own eyes to remind himself that it was still him. Several months of having this new face and he was still trying to get used to it.

The darkness of the jellyfish exhibit is comforting though. He watches one of the jellies swim farther up the cylinder-shaped tank, creating a considerable distance between it and the rest, which stay further down.

There is something peaceful about jellyfish. They are calm creatures just trying to get by in a big ocean. They seem so vulnerable with their squishy, translucent bodies, so delicate. Some have better stings than others, some that feel like nothing more than a pinch, and others that could kill. Frederick looks down at the description plate next to the tank.

"Moon jellyfish venom is harmless for humans, and while the tops are safe to touch, they are also very delicate."

_Sounds a lot like me_ , Frederick muses. He looks up at the jelly that had tried to swim to the top. It was unmoving in the water, content to float there on its own. Frederick's heart goes out to that jelly and for the first time in years, he thinks about that assignment.

His brow knits at the thought of it. If he was a type of animal, which animal would he be? A jellyfish, he remembers, because people think him weak when they look at him, but he's actually dangerous and strong underneath it all.

_What a silly answer_ , Frederick scoffs. And yet...

He remembers how that assignment got his teacher's attention. It was one of the few times an adult cared about the bullying situation he remembers constantly being in up until high school, where people -including the class bullies- tended to ignore him completely. Nothing came of it and young Freddy had been too scared to ever bring it up again. His teacher eventually let it go. He frowns at the thought that he can't even remember that teacher's name now, or even her face.

Frederick raises a hand to the tank, not quite touching the glass. The illumination of the jellies and light inside the tank makes his skin look blue in an inhuman way, almost as if he glowed too.

He _is_ a jellyfish, he decides, a jellyfish that has survived sharks. He's an injured jellyfish struggling to continue swimming. Frederick heart sinks at the thought of one of these moon jellies struggling through the water after being attacked by a predator. It probably wouldn't survive.

How the hell does _he_ keep surviving after everything?

He pictures the injured jellyfish growing new tentacles that are similar to its old ones that were torn off by shark teeth. None of the jelly's friends recognize it after that, nor did they seem to care. Perhaps it was their fault the jellyfish was attacked by the sharks in the first place. The jelly swims off to be by its lonesome, feeling betrayed by the cruel 'friends' it once had.

Frederick rests his forehead on the tank and sighs.

"I understand you," he whispers to the jellyfish.

One of the jellies swims particularly close to the glass and Frederick feels the urge to reach out and touch it, to make a connection. Unable to, he straightens his posture and moves on to a tank of tiny pink jellies.

Frederick ends up staying at the exhibit for over an hour.


End file.
